Are we in a golden age of UK dance producers? Alongside individuals such as Jamie xx, Jon Hopkins and Four Tet, you also have amazing duos in the form of Bicep and the (still sensational) Chemical Brothers. There is certainly a lot of high quality work out there.
In this context it’s worth considering Samuel Shepherd’s work as Floating Points, which has often ducked out of being straight dance, but whose new album plots a path straight into the middle of it. The result is a fantastic direct sequel to 2019's ‘Crush’ that should interest new listeners and push him up festival bills.
‘Cascade’ takes Shepherd’s signature blend of jazz and electronica and packages them into nine-ish rip roaring progressive house tracks, blending a dizzying array of sounds and samples into a compelling happening.
It’s thoughtful stuff that packs a good deal of music theory into a dance record and has multiple sonic easter eggs that present themselves over multiple listens. The most transcendental track here is Fast Forward, where a sprawling and twinkly synth melody is built out to a space odyssey, all diaphanous textures and warp-speed kick drum.
One of the elements that helps it retain musical interest is the detuned quality in the decay of the patches. Like his genre cousin Hopkins, Shepherd has noticed that giving electronic music a level of untidiness makes it less sterile. It’s the spiritual opposite of making human voices sound computer-generated with AutoTune. It’s demanding.
It’s not all driving dance, though. Album closer Ablaze is basically an ambient track, somewhere between a contemporary soundscape and Vangelis’s Blade Runner soundtrack. It’s another musical reference point covered without feeling by-the-numbers.
Indeed, it’s the capacity of this album to look forward and backwards that makes it stand out. Birth4000 uses the sort of arp-based synth patch favoured by Giorgio Moroder on some of his most famous tracks alongside a Chicago house rhythm — this is a more retro track that still absolutely bangs. But overall ‘Cascade’ feels current because of the sophistication and integrity of the musical flourishes in the decays, the twists, the fills.
Electronic music from the 1990s and before was often quite rigid in its arrangement, with production software that sometimes restricted composition. Floating Points as a dance producer is nearing the top of his game, mastering the tech and growing as a composer. This is one of the best albums of the year so far.
Floating Points Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
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